


I'll Catch You (In My Arms)

by skimmy77



Series: Havenrock [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e21 Monument Point, F/M, Grief/Mourning, post 4x21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skimmy77/pseuds/skimmy77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver helps Felicity deal with the catastrophy of Havenrock. Post 4x21.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Catch You (In My Arms)

**Author's Note:**

> I used the census data of Mannasas, VA, which is somewhat close to Havenrock on the map from 4x21. Nothing against Mannasas, just needed a point of reference.

Felicity didn’t have time to get lost in her own grief with Darhk still out there, wreaking havoc on Star City. Oliver and John were depending on her. Thea was depending on her. So she pushed her emotions away for the sake of the mission. Thankfully, neither Lyla nor her father tried to console her. That would have opened floodgates of agony she wasn’t ready to process.

There was a brief moment when Oliver tried, but she shut him down immediately by redirecting their conversation to the matter at hand. John gave her a look, but he knew better than to prod at her wound when it was so fresh. So for the next 36 hours, Felicity buried her thoughts under adrenaline fueled focus to take down Darhk once and for all.

Once it was all over, she continued to run from her thoughts by keeping herself busy at all costs. Which wasn’t hard, because during the day, she fought to reclaim control of Palmer Tech, and by night she worked hard to keep tabs on everyone she cared about.

John left Star City to run away from his own pain, taking Lyla and Sara with him. Felicity didn’t blame him. He was directly responsible for his brother’s death, and he would carry that guilt forever. She didn’t begrudge him some time away to heal.

Thea’s entire focus was on tracking down Merlyn, who had fled the city during the melee. She was determined to end his life, once and for all, and Oliver tried, unsuccessfully, to talk her off that ledge. She wouldn’t listen.

Captain Lance apparently ran away with her mother, as he tried to get distance from Laurel’s death. She was glad her mom was with him. It was one less person she had to worry about.

Oliver, god bless him, stayed, and he did his best to be there for Felicity. But she wouldn’t let him in, because if she did, her grief bubble would burst, and the pain would bury her alive.

But he was persistent. And falling apart was inevitable. It happened several days after...everything.

***

Oliver was worried. Really worried. Felicity wasn’t sleeping, or eating, or doing anything besides keeping her mind off the bombing of Havenrock. He tried to respect her desire for space; after all, if anyone could understand the weight of what she was feeling, it was him. He knew it would do no good to offer platitudes, or reassurances that she did the right thing, that she made an impossible decision. He knew from experience that the weight of guilt didn’t lift so easily. It would take time. A lot of time.

But he did whatever he could. He tried to recall his own pain, and what others did to help him through it. In the end, the only thing he could do was stay by her side while she dealt with things her own way.

He found her in the bunker at three in the morning, sitting in her chair, staring at the monitors with a tortured expression. Tears tracked down her face, trailing faint black lines of mascara down her cheeks. Oliver’s heart broke at the sight.

“Hey,” he whispered as he walked up the steps. One glance at the screen revealed a variety of numbers. Statistics, he realized, of Havenrock’s population. His heart sunk further.

Oliver rolled the other chair beside hers and eased into it with a groan, his ribs still sore from fighting Darhk. He placed a hand near Felicity’s on the desk, close but not quite touching, and waited patiently for her to speak first.

She finally broke the silence after ten minutes.

“42,081,” she rasped, her voice hoarse from disuse.

Oliver closed his eyes with a frown.

“3,618 of them were children under the age of five,” she continued in a blank tone. “11,361 under 18.”

“Felicity--”

“12,274 families, gone in the blink of an eye.”

Oliver extended his hand to cover hers.

“All of them dead, because of me.”

Oliver sighed. “Felicity--”

She yanked her hand away. “Please don’t,” she whispered.

He fell silent.

Felicity shook her head. “I know, rationally, that there were no good options. I know, rationally, that it was Darhk’s fault. That we saved millions, even billions, by doing what we did. But all I can think about is the 42,000 that are dead because of a choice that  _I_  made.

“I’m a mass murderer,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

Another heavy silence fell between them.

With his heart in his throat, Oliver began to speak. “When I was in Hong Kong, I had to stop Chien Na Wei from unleashing the Omega Virus. I was able to recover most of the vials, except one. I don’t know how many people died, but the district it hit had a population of just over 200,000.”

Felicity finally turned her head to look at Oliver, some unnamed emotion swirling in her eyes.

“I  _know,_  Felicity.” He gazed into her eyes, desperate to reach her. “ _I_  know, more than anyone, the weight of guilt you’re feeling right now.”

Two more tears spilled down her cheeks as his words finally broke through. “How...how do you do it?” she asked, her voice quavering with emotion. “How do you survive this...this...” She gestured helplessly, unable to verbalize her pain.

He took hold of her hand once again and squeezed. “It won’t be easy. It will probably haunt you for the rest of your life.” Felicity’s eyes dropped as more tears flowed. “Eventually, you’ll find a way to forgive yourself and move on.”

“I will never forgive myself,” she snapped, her gaze returning to the statistics. “I don’t think I should.”

“I know you feel that way right now,” he said, reaching with his other hand to cradle hers. “You’re looking for ways to punish yourself, torturing yourself with details, because you feel the need to pay for what happened. You’re replaying the sequence of events, looking for ways it could have gone differently, playing the ‘What if’ game over and over again. ‘What if I had directed it toward the water?’ ‘What if I had thought of this earlier?’ ‘What if I had just one more minute to change the outcome?’

“I have my own guilt to bear. What if I had gotten to Murmur earlier, before he shot your dad? What if you hadn’t been interrupted? You and I can both play the ‘what if’ game until we’re blue in the face, but we can’t take back what happened.”

One sob broke through Felicity’s defenses before she squeezed her eyes shut, pushing away her grief. But Oliver saw the crack in her armor and pulled her into his arms, knowing that she had to break before healing could begin.

“No,” she protested, pushing on his arms. “No--”

“Shh.” Oliver pressed her head into his neck and stroked her hair. “It’s okay, Felicity. I’ve got you.”

“No!” she screamed, beating on his chest with her fists as she tried to break away. “Let go of me!”

Oliver held on tight, wincing at each punch to his bruised ribs, willingly taking the hits for her sake. He would gladly be her punching bag in order to help her heal. “I’ve got you, Felicity. I’ve got you.”

Felicity’s punches grew weaker as more sobs tore through her throat, both of their bodies shaking with the force of her grief. When she finally stopped fighting it, she slumped against his chest, weeping and trembling. He tucked one hand under her knees and pulled her onto his lap, holding her as sobs wracked her body and stole her breath.

“You can let go now,” he whispered in her ear as her cries echoed through the bunker.

“I’ll catch you.”


End file.
